“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I celebrated my birthday this past month, and with it, I officially crossed into my late fifties.
This one sat a little differently. I keep counting the years between where I am and the age my father was when he passed away. That number used to feel far away. It doesn’t anymore. I’m just a couple of years away now.
It’s sad for me to think of how young he was. Funny how I can look at his age and see youth, then look at mine and feel old. Mindset is a tricky thing. Lately, I’m just trying to use that number as a helpful teacher.
First, it teaches me gratitude. I look around at my husband, who is also my business partner and somehow still likes me. I think of my two daughters off at college living their best lives, growing and stretching themselves. I have work that lights me up and friends who make me laugh out loud. I have a lot.
It also teaches me how fragile all of this is. None of us gets to see the full calendar.
Then there’s the regret. Looking back, I wish I had been a better, more confident version of myself. Maybe that’s just part of growing up. None of us arrive fully formed, and the mistakes are how we learn who we are. For a recovering perfectionist, that’s a hard truth to accept. I’m working on it.
Birthdays like this one tempt you to plan some grand reinvention. I’ve decided I’m done with that word.
For years, I bought into the idea of reinvention. New year, new me. New decade, new me. I’ve used the word myself and have probably written about it in this very newsletter. Lately it has started to feel wrong. Reinvention suggests the old version needs to be scrapped and torn down to the studs. Underneath it is a quiet rejection of who we already are. I don’t like that.
At my age, I don’t want to start over. I want to keep going.
My years at HGTV taught me that the best renovations respect the bones of the house. You keep what’s strong, fix what’s broken, and build from there. Evolution works the same way. It accepts who I am today and trusts that I can show up a little better tomorrow, without burning myself out trying to become someone else.
The world has no shortage of opinions about who we should be, especially in midlife. It has opinions about what we should look like, what we should wear, how much protein we should eat, and what success looks like. But I already have a foundation, and it took decades to pour. It is always easier to build on what’s real than to construct someone you’re not and hope it holds.
I believe wisdom begins with acceptance. That means accepting the years behind me, mistakes included, and accepting the woman I am right now. From that place, aging stops feeling like punishment and starts feeling like privilege.
As I build on my foundation, I’ll decide what needs a little reinforcement or sprucing up. I’ll also decide for myself what success looks like in this next chapter, without letting my social media feed cast the deciding vote.
So this year, I’m not planning a new me. I’m planning more of me: wiser, kinder, more present, and a little braver. That’s the aim, anyway.
What might change if you stopped trying to reinvent yourself and started building on who you already are?
TWO TIPS TO fOR PLANNING FOR MORE OF YOU
1. TAKE STOCK OF YOUR FOUNDATION.
Before you set another goal, take stock of what’s already solid. Write down five things about yourself you would keep no matter what: a value you live by, a talent people count on you for, a lesson that cost you something to learn. These are your good bones. Choose one to build on this month and ask yourself what a slightly better version of it would look like in practice. Progress is much easier when you aren’t fighting your own blueprint.
2. REFRAME REGRET.
Pick an age when you wish you’d been more confident and write her a short note. Tell her what you know now. Then name one thing she got right, because she got more right than you give her credit for. Finish by choosing one place this week where you’ll show up with the confidence you wish she’d had. Regret becomes useful when it shapes how you show up today. After that, you can set it down.
Traci Schubert Barrett is a Nashville-based keynote speaker and founding executive of HGTV, where she helped grow a fledgling idea into a billion-dollar brand. After two decades in media, she walked away to ask a bigger question: what if there’s more than success? That question became her award-winning book, What If There’s More?: Finding Significance Beyond Success, and her Healthy Ambition™ framework, which helps leaders and entrepreneurs achieve high performance without burnout. She is co-founder and President of Navigate the Journey.
